As part of our active membership of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Social Media Council, it’s our duty to discuss, debate and disclose details and information about the issues facing the industry today.
Effective immediately, we’ll be contributing a monthly column to the IAB UK Social blog pages and that kicks off today with this blog post covering off the ASA’s new remit, Tiger Woods’ sponsorship with Nike and acceptance of modern day commercially arranged endorsements.
This morning, Mashable is reporting the launch of Ticketmaster‘s latest layer of Facebook integration, a move that allows users to see exactly where their Facebook friends will be sitting at various different events and gigs across the globe.
Live on over 9000 events across the Ticketmaster website, the new interactive map enables seat tagging, which will post to your Facebook wall requesting (or nudging) your friends to do the same.
Got that? No? Try watching this 80 second explanation -
Social ticketing is something we’ve talked about before here at the ‘heads, but that was more around using social media to reward regular attendees with loyalty points and bonuses. What Ticketmaster have done here – really quite well – is taken the Facebook social graph API and applied it to their own site.
In a similar way that Trip Advisor change the structure of what you’re looking at depending on your friends’ purchasing decisions after their experiences, Ticketmaster has taken a step forward by showing the purchasing decision before the experience. Enabling friends to buy tickets whenever they want instead of waiting and waiting until they’re able to get their tickets at the same time.
“How much are we seeing of social brought into commerce rather commerce being brought into social?”
Setting up shop in a Facebook tab is [relatively] easy by comparison, so why not consider changing your customers’ web experience based upon their Facebook preferences as they travel around your website?
To top it off, Ticketmaster’s research suggests that every time a ticket purchase is shared through social, that converts to an extra five dollars in additional ticket sales. Social media integration moving the sales needle? Perfection. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future.
Irrespective of your feelings around the Ticketmaster brand, this new feature is smart, useful and ultimately beneficial to the end customer. Well done.
The Challenge:
How do we use WOMTrak to help market both 1000heads and its insights and analysis suite?
The Insight:
1000heads excels at reactive work. Contemporaneous content will always get bigger pick up, so throughout June we planned to keep our eyes peeled for an event where we could do just that.
What We Did:
Working with a small but multi-talented team (and taking inspiration from an earlier 1000heads blog post) we would use the heavyweight championship boxing match between David Haye & Wladimir Klitschko as a test subject for our word of mouth analysis team. Tracking data before, during and after the fight would give us three groups of data, or ’rounds’, that we could give to our creative team and external design partners to build an infographic around.
1000heads is unique in this space in that we don’t just specialise in social media. We wanted the end result to not only demonstrate the power of our WOMTrak product, but also our speed & agility in turning projects around. We hadn’t attempted anything like this before and so the drive was there to not only get it right first time but to also somehow keep it uniquely 1000heads’.
Everything can be made better, there has to be a time when you say ‘No more. Publish.’
Irrespective of the result, a good infographic will always get picked up
Overall the results (for what was fundamentally merely a test subject) were outstanding.
A 400% increase in blog traffic, a number of new business enquiries and of course, the proof that we have the team to produce this kind of work for all our clients, both old and new.
It should be said that, internally at least, we made our objectives clear from the outset: how can we use the latest news events to demonstrate our products, our creativity and ultimately our hard work and agility. I think I can quite safely say that when it came to answering the brief, our team stepped up and delivered.
Last week, after getting all excited about this past weekend’s BIG FIGHT, I tasked our hardcore team of crack word of mouth analysts with monitoring and tracking all the social media buzz leading up to, during and after the main event.
Working tirelessly through the weekend (along with our creative team here internally and our design team at Lethal), they’ve just produced this awesome Haye vs. Klitschko online/offline infographic, check it out –
As an FYI, WOMTrak™ is 1000heads’ own bespoke word of mouth and social media monitoring tool that uses both technology and human analysis to produce these kinds of results for our clients day in, day out.
You’re forgiven if you don’t stick around for the whole thing; although compelling, if you’re no boxing fan then I doubt you’ll be that intrigued.
But, what amazes me is that HBO managed to get these two men in the same room for that amount of time. The ‘Face Off’ series is – to my surprise – nothing new. HBO have been pulling this off for some time now, but the best part is they’ve been posting them up on YouTube.
Yes!
At the time of writing the video only has 302 views but, with the world lining up to watch potentially the biggest fight of the year (and in spite of it weighing in at a hefty 12minutes), there is huge huge viral potential here. HBO have, unlike many other US-based media owners, allowed the clip to not only be embedded but also to be seen outside of the United States. With two weeks to go between now and the first ring of that bell, the build up is only just beginning and this video will fly.
“You don’t make a viral video, you can merely set the conditions and hope that something goes viral.”
HBO have a history of being fairly savvy online, their Twitter presences stretch far and wide and happily interact. One quick glance at the @HBOBoxing stream and you can see not only conversations with the fans, but also RTs of their content as well as that of their other flagship shows such as Game of Thrones.
This kind of social media integration cross-channel and cross-platform is exactly the kind of thing media producers, globally, should be implementing right now. HBO are clearly leading the way and one can only wonder what they might have lined up on Fight Night to help manage the huge global audience tuning in to watch Haye take on Klitschko.
Like X-Factor here in the UK and the Superbowl over in the US, this fight has the potential to create massive impact through social media both from an action/blow-by-blow standpoint but also from the perspective of potential advertisers.
It may seem silly to point it out, if you’re reading this you may even think that it goes without saying but – just in case – if you’re seriously lining up something for that ad space – like Yeo Valley before – do yourself a favour and think about social.
Big hat tip to Luca Massaro for finding the video first.
One of the biggest problems facing almost all sports teams and associations today is the question of how to maintain and/or boost attendance figures.
And frankly the reason the question keeps popping up so regularly is because it’s such a hard thing to affect – no matter which marketing channel you use. Short of picking people up in a bus and driving them to the ground it’s always going to be difficult to drive attendance due to the costs associated with doing so.
To reverse the famous idiom; it’s the last step which is always is the hardest.
But just because it’s difficult, that doesn’t mean marketers, and social marketers in particular, should shy away from the problem. Funnily enough, it’s something that I’ve been considering ever since I started working in the industry and I figured I’d share a couple interesting examples I’ve come across recently whilst researching this area – as well as present an idea of my own.
The two examples presented here both take the form of the tagged mega photo. This particular type of execution plays on one of the key benefits of attending an event live; the ‘I was there’ feeling you get when you are part of something so large and so social.
The idea behind this is to engage attendees in a simple Facebook tagging exercise, which has resulted in 20,753 tags to date – pretty nice work as I’m sure you’ll agree, and a great way to drive to Facebook fan acquisition.
The problem with this method however is that it mainly works as a reward mechanism for attendance; rather than actually driving attendance to the event itself.
The second example I’ve found goes some way to address this, as well as looking to drive – more importantly – a potential new revenue stream. The Pittsburgh Steelers are an American Football team with a history of innovative marketing campaigns. In collaboration with McDonalds they have launched the McDonalds Gigapixel fancam which works on the same principle as the FA Cup final photo, but with the additional build of allowing users to then order prints from the game.
From what I can work out the picture is taken every week, acting as a nice incentive for people to regularly attend as they get the chance to own a truly unique piece of merchandise/memorabilia from the game. In terms of results so far; 16,892 facebook likes and 551 tweets. Not hugely ground-breaking I’ll give you that, but still that is a lot of engaged facebook fans.
(NB: I haven’t been able to get figures for how many prints have been ordered)
Both of these clearly have their limitations though; they are both pretty one dimensional in terms of the social networks they utilise, and they both only really work as a one-off incentive.
So how could brands take this further? Well, here’s an idea – how about creating a social season ticket based on the same principles as Empire Avenue?
For the uninitiated, Empire Avenue is “a stock market simulation social network game” [phew], which basically allows users to buy and sell shares of people and websites. However, individual stock prices are not only affected by how much people buy or sell, but also by how active the participants are in social media.
Staying on point, you could begin to reward fans for all manner of stadium-based social content; checking in with Facebook places or Foursquare, tweeting about (or with) the ground itself, post-event Flickr tags, YouTube uploads, comments, likes, RTs… the list is almost endless.
Over the course of the season fans could build up points/credits/whatever you want to brand it and these then get cashed in for tickets, merchandise etc. Ten RTs = 10% off a ticket, two Youtube videos = a free shirt – I think you get the idea.
You could tailor it specifically in accordance with your fans current behaviour, as well as using it to encourage new behaviour. This would clearly remove the one dimensional aspect of the previous engagement methods, and also as it would work like a Nectar points scheme you remove the problem of the activity only working once as it would encourage repeat rewards.
Moreover, combining this social interaction model with the more traditional loyalty/membership card scheme (like Nectar) that you can find at most events, then you can really start capitalising on, engaging with and ultimately rewarding your true brand advocates.
It’s a new month and so we embark upon a new theme of conversation for 1000heads.com.
For April, we’ll be sporadically focusing on all things Retail and, as resident sporty-head here at 1000heads HQ, I’ve taken it upon myself to apply some of my usual sports-based thinking to that of the retail world.
Ready? Here we go -
Let’s look at sports teams. Each and every one of them, no matter the sport, all look to make the most of their home games throughout their respective seasons; the increased support, the familiarity of the surroundings, as well as benefiting from the negative factors affecting the opposing away team – all combine to make the home advantage a very real and tangible asset.
It was with this in mind that I started thinking about the recent announcement from NikeTown Boston. To help promote the launch of their new Nike Free Run+2 range of trainers (as well as capitalise on the excitement for the upcoming Boston marathon), NikeTown Boston is creating a series of running-themed events across the city of Boston.
The events themselves will provide attendees with a customized training program, as well as expert training and guided weekly runs on Wednesday evenings. On top of that, guests will get to enjoy complimentary shoe trials, weekly tech sessions and post-run training refreshments, all leading up to the Boston Marathon. Nike created five branded events, with topics ranging from utilising Nike+ technology to keep track of your runs, race day preparation, to developing different stride patterns and working out which one works best for you.
Even though Nike doesn’t have an official relationship with the Boston Marathon, it’s clearly not letting this stop it getting involved with people’s preparation for the big event. And with an event such as a marathon the preparation is the most important part, the ‘on the day’ involvement is minimal, and not likely to have much of an impact on the people taking part.
However, this is not the bit that interests me. What interests me here is that Nike is clearly making an effort to capitalise on their home advantage. Nike knows that its NikeTown stores are pretty impressive retail locations, and different to the average trainer shop.
But by providing social reasons for people to come to the store – above and beyond being a customer – Nike are creating more opportunities for people to have an immersive experience, and benefit from a deeper level of engagement with the brand, the staff, its products and the store itself.
Here at 1000heads we’re always preaching to our clients that every touch point of their business has the potential to be social and conversational, thus making them a potential source of brand advocacy, retail included. Obviously it helps that NikeTown stores are so impressive, but there is definitely something to be learnt for all brands which have a retail presence.
Retail stores are not just a sales channel, a queue for the tills or a scrum for the best bargain. Retail locations can be far, far more than that, and can provide you with a reason to turn the customer into a true brand advocate.
“Radio was put on the map by the abdication of King Edward in 1936, 17 years later TV was put on the map by the coronation, and the Olympics is going to do for digital, what the coronation did for TV and the abdication did for radio. This is going to be the digital Olympics and it’s going to cause people to flock to the BBC’s digital output like never before.”
“We’ll be offering every minute of the games live and on demand with social media laced throughout this. We’ll be reporting on what the athletes are saying, we’ll be guiding the audience to the athletes, we’ll be reporting on what the organisers are saying, we’ll be carrying our content out there into the social media space, we’ll be listening to what our audience have to say about the Olympics and we’ll use what our audience say in our reporting.”
“Digital will be at the heart of what the BBC does around the Olympics, and social media will be at the heart of digital.”
Those quotes are taken from an interview I conducted on Monday with the Editor of the BBC Sport website, Lewis Wiltshire. It’s a fairly big ambition as you can no doubt understand.
However, from a broadcast (and interactive) perspective, the BBC are well ahead of the game. Which is a shame as the rest of the sporting world has a long way to go before they can even begin to match the Beeb’s innovative appetite for digital engagement. Allow me to explain -
As resident ‘sporty head’ here at 1000heads, it’s down to me to keep abreast of the latest and greatest developments across this particular category and the one thing that has always left me frustrated is that the ‘industry’ (if I can call it that) as a whole, seems to lag behind the rest of the commercial world when it comes to practically anything social media related.
But what Lewis’ quote above shows is that sports brands, bodies, athletes and personalities are all going to have to step up their social game pretty sharpish, or simply get left behind as the sporting digital revolution takes hold and flies past quicker than Usain Bolt running for his next bucket of nuggets.
With journalists now using quotes direct from athletes’ Twitter feeds, YouTube clips increasingly making it into sports reports, and sports stars also increasingly taking hold of their own content, companies with a vested interest in the biggest sporting event in the world need to have their social media and digital activations plans in place and planned in depth before the opening ceremony.
The dominating feature of sport and social media currently is that of an uncoordinated mess of tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook fan pages, blogs and foursquare check ins. What the industry needs is some strategy – some order to this madness.
From our perspective here at the ‘heads, this means effective social signposting (directing people to the right places), the streamlining of social presences and ensuring that the right content is in the right places.
All of these things (and many more) are going to be key in the upcoming months. Brands and sports bodies need to mould the habits of their fans and followers now so that once the games hit, they can make themselves heard above all the noise.
As part of our active membership of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Social Media Council, it’s our duty to discuss, debate and disclose details and information about the issues facing the industry today.
The first example is the FA Cup Final photo taken by 
It’s a new month and so we embark upon a new theme of conversation for 1000heads.com.
But what Lewis’ quote above shows is that sports brands, bodies, athletes and personalities are all going to have to step up their social game pretty sharpish, or simply get left behind as the sporting digital revolution takes hold and flies past quicker than Usain Bolt running for 